Why does the US military still fight & train like it's still fighting the 20th century Cold War & not.........

Question

what certainly now looks like a 21st century dominated by guerrilla wars because no one is stupid enough to take on the US military in a conventional war?

Even in this day & age of the War on terror only about 5% of the entire US military budget is spent on US special forces & counter insurgency training while the rest of the US military is preparing for WW3 that will never come because if it does all the nuke weapons will take care of that war.

Are US military leaders so stupid that they don't realize all of that or can the US Defense industry not afford to lose those billons of US taxpayer dollars?

Answer 1

Actually, the US military is evolving to fight asymmetric wars. The problem is that the current president is still fighting the "cold war".

Answer 2

Retransforming the military is a large task especially because the US has the most complex and sophisticated military. THe military and the government agrees with you and are taking steps but it doesnt happen over night. The old Sec of Defense Rumsfeld led the campaign after the BRAC commission reported its findings. Rumsfeld decided to close many inactive cold war bases and re proportionate the fighting forces.

As a result the military is cutting down non combat roles in the navy and air force and increasing recruiting heavily for special forces in the army and marines. Also with higher numbers of special forces units comes higher funding. Also the exact percentage of money going to special forces will never be known because of the sensitive nature, that information is let alone "SECRET" and is debated under close doors in the senate armed forces committee.

Answer 3

Your thinking was the same mistake made in the 1920's, 1950's, and 1970's. Remember the War to end all Wars??? 20 years later we fought a
conventional War. In June 1950, we had the A-bomb a Airforce and had won WW2. Guess what? We nearly lost Korea...... In the 1950's guys in the Pentagon told fighter pilots, "The days of guns on planes are over. Missles will do it all & SAC will bomb everybody." 10 years later, We had to start "TOP GUN" to teach pilots how to dogfight a MiG. Spec Ops is good at what it does, but the military has a wide range of Mission needs. You Also tend to not notice the conventional arms build ups in Iran, Russia, China, Venezuela. They are not playing with IED's. They are playing with new Subs, Su-37's And TU-95's are back in the air off the UK & Guam.... Sorry, We still need the big guns.

Answer 4

Where did you get your facts? At Ft. Polk, LA. there is a training center there that conventional soldiers (non-elite, Special Operations Command type) go to train. They train in HIC which is High Intensity Combat, and LIC which is Low Intensity Combat, the main difference being what size of force you are training with. Battalion level or higher, or Company and small unit, (platoon and squad) size. At Company level they do a lot of MOUT (Military Operations in Urban Terrain) ambush, raids, etc. Also at Ft. Irwin, Califorina, they have the National Training Center which trains large force on force combat. So it is not just the Special Ops guys that train up for low intensity combat. The Army is more well rounded than you have been led to believe, and the Marine Corps has probably been training the same way.
Get your facts right, and don't be scared to show where you got your info. I got mine from 21 years service, retired for 14 years now. Been there done that. How about you?

Answer 5

You know, Rumsfeld tried that and got grilled and hammered for it. The problem of transforming a military to fight a insurgency like this and terrorists is it has to be small, quick and fast. Our military is none of the above. But the military has expanded its training of special forces. But the problem is people don't really understand what special forces is or are and how hard it is to get the right soldiers for it. Besides nobody will acknowledge what you just pointed out.

Answer 6

Another way of looking at this is to say that the reason we don't have to concern ourselves with conventional wars very much is because there is nobody in the world that can stand up to our forces.

And that is no small thing.

As to fighting the last war: you are simply not paying attention.

The technology embedded in our aircraft and cruise missiles and UAVs very much allow us to make much more surgical strikes with much fewer assets then we had to use even ten years ago.

Now, as to whether we should be fighting certain wars in certain places, that is a political decision.

And all you have to do is vote in a democratic congress and you will see all unneccesary wars come to an end.

Oh. Wait.

We did.

Answer 7

The military always re-fights the last war. We even attempted to fight Vietnam with World War II tactics, and you can see where that got us.

The reason that Cold War thinking seems to be taking such a prominent place in our defense Establishment is because it was the norm for so long, and we hadn't bothered coming up with anything to replace it, so when the Iron Curtain fell, we were totally caught off guard.

Perhaps we should have come up with our own version of "blitzkrieg". Or perhaps we should just "bring the boys home".

Answer 8

By asking this question you are either in the military or you attempting to start a career in politics. As a staff sergeant gearing up for a deployment to my second combat zone, I have asked leadership this same question. The answer that I always get is..."I don't make the decisions, I just follow them." Which upsets me more than before I asked the question for what ever asinine detail/duty we are doing at the time.

The military lives on time honored traditions and it takes literally an act of Congress to change any one thing in it. Example, one year ago after coming back from Afghanistan, we still went into a clearing in the woods and set up our WWII style tents to run a Brigade Aid Station out of it. Ridiculous, I know. In the ghan, we acquired buildings to work out of and that is how we should train. Now saying that, we are slowly adapting to new combat tactics. Recently, we trained through MOUT courses (cities built for soldiers to patrol, clear houses and buildings, and to set up shop for days or weeks at a time) and do mission specific training. So even though some of the training is still "20th century", things are training and soldiers are going over more prepared than ever. I guess what I am trying to say is... any progress is good progress.

Sorry if I was not much help, but with OPSEC (Operational Security) and everything that we must keep quiet these days, I can't go much into details. So I hope that this helped you a little.

Answer 9

Because what if one day someone decides to fight a conventional war with the US? If we were un prepared for a modern conventional war, it would be a bigger disaster than being unprepared for guerilla warfare. And guerilla warfare can escalate into conventional warfare. And if America suddenly became prepared for guerilla war the same way it is prepared for conventional war, people would stop fighting guerilla wars with us and start fighting convetional ones. Its not really possible to be on top of both, so they chose the lesser of to evils to protect against. Because guerilla war will most likely not be fought on American soil, but conventional war will likely be fought on American soil.

Answer 10

Because the people leading it are still cognitive of the Cold War. Instead of updating their tactics to reflect the urban type warfare that is going to be a mainstay of this age, they have sat on their laurels and developed the U.S. military into a big clunky, P.C. police, too clumsy to move efficiently and too afraid to kill an innocent bystander. Also, the military has bought into its own hype of being so sophisticated that it only need to rely on computer guidance systems and air raids to win.